I had felt something building for months. As tears, no longer able to be contained, spilled down my face in the bean aisle at Kroger, it was painfully obvious that it was time to process my sadness.
When the Lord changed our family’s story in May 2023, we felt we needed to share our news with only joy and excitement. I mean, leaving for Germany was joyful and exciting, so why would returning “home” be different? Surely, the land of Amazon Prime, SEC Football, and bottomless bowls of salsa and chips would be enough.
So, with our false thinking, we hid our sorrow from our supporters and put on a brave face as we told them our “exciting news” — never to address the holes in our lives left by our grief.
“Grief is when the bottom falls out of your world, and the solid footing you had yesterday is gone. Mourning is the second part of the experience, the process where grief is expressed,” writes H. Norman Wright in his book Experiencing Grief. The Lord told us we would experience a metaphorical funeral when packing our things to close down our lives and leave our communities in Germany, but I assumed that after the funeral, joy would immediately return. Instead, I was left with the intense feeling of sorrow.
I have learned that grief is not just contained to the loss of someone, but also experienced in the loss of dreams, a possibility, an identity, or hope not yet realized. For us, it wasn’t just the loss of our beloved people that was so painful; it was all the other losses that occurred. The closure of our ministry in Germany affected how we lived our lives, ate, worked, and worshiped. We felt the empty seats at our dinner table, and in the seat next to us at church, and less noise in our house, but we also missed public transit, Christmas traditions, and singing worship in German.
One of our teens, seemingly randomly, said, “I miss all the people that used to be over all the time,” as he walked through the kitchen on an average afternoon. Another teen, usually more silent in their thoughts, said out loud, “I miss bike lanes.” Nevertheless, I continued to hide my personal sorrow in the closet because, after all, we were back with “all” our family, and in our “home,” and we were supposed to be grateful.
Some of you might be thinking, “Then why did you leave Germany?”
Because faith is involved in this process. Faith is many things. It is not knowing the answer to the why and being willing to wait for an answer. Or not liking the answer to the why and being willing to go, in faithful obedience, regardless.
So, in Kroger, with just me and the kidney beans, the Lord asked, “Will you go into these deep waters of sorrow with me, or will you remain on the seashore in shifting sand?” I was convinced my sorrow was just too deep to be redeemed and too frightening to be touched. Hesitantly, I agreed to face the lie whispered in darkness, “My pain is bigger than, or can be elevated above, the cross of Jesus.”
Deep in my subconscious, I knew walking the path where heartache can be redeemed, healed, and transformed would only allow for richer relationships and deeper and more meaningful ministry. My facing and healing of sorrow was vital work, because the alternative to seeking and knowing Christ’s joy is only more separation from myself, from God, and others.
So, with the understanding that this kind of journey into these parts of our heart is never easy, I have been intentional in my transition from my role at the Attorney General’s Office back into full-time ministry. The day after my “Kroger Incident,” I sat criss-cross apple sauce on my bed and said, “Ok, Lord, help me be sad. I’m ready to cry.”
But after four hours of sitting with no tears, I finally gave up and scrolled Instagram until a woman I follow online said something that stopped me mid-scroll: “We don’t care that we’re lost. Being lost just means we’ve outgrown our map.”
I felt that deep in my bones. As the waves of ambiguous grief crashed down into my soul, I felt like I would drown in an ocean of mourning. When I came up for air, washed up on an unknown shore, I realized I was lost on my map. The one I drew years ago of how ministry, motherhood, and faith would unfold was not the land beneath me.
There were amazing landmarks and mountains our family had climbed these past two years, but they weren’t the “normal” ones American culture hands out as proof that life is on track. Instead, we had summited mountains named Hard-won Healing and Life After Overseas. And the lakes, oh, the glorious lakes I had expected to be named Limitless Future were instead called Still Standing when we weren’t sure we would. The Valley of Unlearning and Relearning Belonging, a long, tender stretch, became where we learned to form a new community in the absence of the old.
I was so disoriented I couldn’t even find the “You are here” dot. Desperate for recognizable landmarks, I begged the Lord to restore my map of cultural norms and societal expectations. A map I constructed as a safe place for myself and family, designed to bring comfort, blend in, be found worthy of friendships, donor support, and belonging. And in my mourning with Jesus, He showed me the map I long to return to is a false Eden. It was beautiful, but it wasn’t real.
The Lord drew me to Psalm 23: “The Lord is my shepherd, I lack for nothing. He makes me lie down in green pastures, and he leads me beside quiet waters, he refreshes my soul. He guides me along the right paths for his name’s sake. Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.”
And God’s been breathing into my soul, “Stay in this valley. Rest.”
I have located my little red “You are here” dot. It is in the deep green pasture with Jesus next to the quiet water that babbles His refreshing words of joy and redemption from heartache. And I’m learning to stay and give space for mourning, my own and others’. Because sometimes the most sacred ministry we can offer is simply to sit beside someone and not rush them to resurrection.
~~~~~~~~~
Brittany Bruns is a writer, speaker, and cross-cultural practitioner who spent seven years living in Germany. Now stateside, she teaches followers of Jesus how to “be awkward” by helping them move beyond comfort to build authentic relationships with people who don’t think, live, or believe as they do. Along with her husband, Nate, she co-leads their ministry, The Bruns Tribe, and Engaging the Disengaged workshops. For more stories, subscribe to her Dare to Be Awkward Letter, which offers a practical and heartfelt roadmap for sharing faith through relationships rather than arguments on her website at www.BrunsTribe.com. Or find her on Insta @brittany_bruns and facebook.com/Brittany.j.bruns.
